The astronomer's profession is shown by the celestial globe (version by Jodocus Hondius) and the book on the table, the 1621 edition of Adriaan Metius's Institutiones Astronomicae Geographicae.

[2][3][4][7] Symbolically, the volume is open to Book III, a section advising the astronomer to seek "inspiration from God" and the painting on the wall shows the Finding of Moses—Moses may represent knowledge and science ("learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians").

The presumed buyer was Hendrik Sorgh, whose estate sale held in Amsterdam on 28 March 1720 included both The Astronomer and The Geographer, which were described as 'Een Astrologist: door Vermeer van Delft, extra puyk' ('An Astrologist by Vermeer of Delft, top-notch') and 'Een weerga, van ditto, niet minder' ('Similar by ditto, no less').

In 1940 it was seized from his hotel in Paris by the Nazi Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg für die Besetzten Gebiete[clarification needed] after the German invasion of France.

The painting was returned to the Rothschilds after the war, and was acquired by the French state as giving in payment of inheritance taxes in 1983[9][10] and then exhibited at the Louvre since 1983.